They did so as a rhetorical device. Dickens and Carlyle were both defenders of the Confederacy, and took up the argument that the treatment of the British and US working classes was no different to t… (View Post)

I don’t find that in the least bit surprising. People who have been on the receiving end of injustice will often conclude that you’re either giving the beating, or taking it. (View Post)

You’re seeing pre-industrial rural life in rose-tinted terms. Pre-industrial societies (including Scottish clans and English villages), were only ever extractive. The agricultural and industrial revo… (View Post)

There is something massively appealing to the very idea of running a farm, supporting a family from your own produce, and turning a profit from it. But, I don’t think that was ever available to more … (View Post)

Conversely, I would say that life as a peasant was (for the majority), always pretty rough, and when people got the opportunity to obtain better-paid work in cities, and the new industrial towns, the… (View Post)